His name was Kaspar Gottlieb; he is dead now, shot in the ass outside of Moselle, Germany as he fled from the Gestapo. He thought that living along the border would supply him the necessary means to escape a government prepared to condemn him for his writings, and perhaps he was right, but I suppose he did not account for a government prepared to invade the whole of Europe. It happens… He was a writer, and although I had never heard of him he was published, or at least he claimed to be, which counts for something I suppose. Not many people lie about being an author anyway; it’s dangerous business nowadays, because governments are the core subscribers, not the people, and they dictate the parameters of published work. After Kaspar Gottlieb told me about his book I was not surprised that I had not heard of it before. It had been fed to the fires along with the other undesirable works from undesirable authors. It happens, what else is there to say?

I never expected that in my lifetime I would grow immune to the savagery of murder. We learn at a young age that murder is unacceptable in civilized society, that it is a psychopathic act carried out by evil people. They teach us this lesson in school, church, and at home and the message never deviates, but what they don’t teach us is that they are referring to murder in the micro sense – murder in large numbers is entirely acceptable, glorified even.

Kill one man, and you are a murderer

Kill a million men, and you are a conqueror

Kill them all, and you are a god

School is no longer in session, Kaspar would say to me. He understood the motions of the status quo. Why was it they let him live so long after burning his book anyway? School’s out for summer, baby, and the more people I kill the more comedic the act becomes; after two years of killing it has simply lost its impact. Pulling the trigger is second nature. But lately, when I shoot at someone, I find myself thinking of Kaspar Gottlieb and the ashes of his words more and more. What else are we taught? … Oh, yes: that matter is never created or destroyed. Here are Kaspar Gottlieb’s words that even the fires could not fully erase…

“In 1937, before the war started, before the world even knew that it would start, a man from the future – the year 2036 to be exact – travelled to the past to share life saving information with my generation. His name was Gregor Ribbentrop. His self-proclaimed identity as man of the future was scrutinized by nations around the world, because the highest authorities at the times – the military leaders – told us that it was western influence, or Jewish influence, or communist influence, or socialist influence, or fascist influence, and so on depending on what insignia was printed on their uniforms, but Gregor Ribbentrop anticipated this skepticism and countered it by bringing a small library of books from the future, all written by unknown German artists and published a century in the future with unknown watermarks from present day German publishers. The books were written in German, naturally, which he claimed to be the primary language of the future, and he proved this fact by presenting a genealogy composed solely of German surnames, which he also claimed to be the predominant nationality of the future. Every family, after the year 1945 of course, was of Aryan descent: evolution he claimed. Scholars from around the world united to disprove the authenticity of these manuscripts, scrutinizing watermarks, publishing techniques, ink, printing methods, paper, content and so on until it was agreed, without a solitary doubt, that the man truly was from the future and that the evidence he brought back to the past was a valid representation of the progress of civilization. And once that fact was accepted my generation readily listened to what Gregor Ribbentrop had to say, because he was from the future and was therefore of higher authority than anyone in the present, including the military leaders, which suddenly became the past because the philosophy of the future was now dominating the here and now. The ears of my generation picked up, radio stations broadcasted futuristic rhetoric and crowds of people rallied to hear Gregor Ribbentrop’s prophecy. As I’m sure you already know, people in present society obey authority figures without question, just as school taught them to… but then again this could very well be the past, and the future, well… here it is according to the religious prophet of the twentieth century…”

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About Connor Wilkins

Quickly, quickly... take your seat. Our storyteller is about to begin. Shhhh. Listen... His pipes are fluting emotions of myth and fable, but don't be fooled by fantasia for there are truths hidden within his unworldly tellings. We're drifting now... back in time to a world only he remembers.